TOKYO — Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Sunday that he was ready "at any time" to visit a Tokyo war shrine criticized as a symbol of militarism, indicating that he planned to make still another pilgrimage before he steps down next month.

Koizumi again defended his visits to the Yasukuni shrine to pray for Japan's war dead, but he did not specify when he might go again.

Koizumi last visited the shrine in October, and he is widely expected to make his next pilgrimage on Aug. 15, the anniversary of the end of World War II, before stepping down in September.

"I'm ready to visit at any time, but I will decide appropriately," Koizumi told a group of reporters in Hiroshima, where he attended a ceremony marking the 61st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing at the end of World War II.

"I don't think there is anything wrong with a visit by a Japanese prime minister to a Japanese establishment to mourn for the war dead," Koizumi said. "The purpose of the visit to Yasukuni is to pray for the war dead and renew my commitment that war should never be waged. I don't see any problem in that."

Yasukuni deifies the country's 2.5 million war dead, including executed war criminals from World War II. Koizumi's visits to the shrine have strained Tokyo's diplomatic ties with China and other Asian countries that suffered from Japan's wartime aggression.

China and South Korea have harshly protested Koizumi's five visits to the shrine since he took office in 2001.

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Koizumi's visits have also spawned lawsuits claiming that the visits violated the constitutional division of state and religion.

On Friday, the front-runner to be Japan's next prime minister, Shinzo Abe, the chief cabinet secretary, defended visits to the shrine, but he declined to confirm reports that he secretly went there in April.

Abe said such visits were a matter of individual conviction and said he intended to pray for the souls of the dead, implying that he could make further visits. His support for visits to the shrine signals further possible friction between Japan and its neighbors.

South Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki Moon, will tell Abe on Wednesday that "South Korea-Japan relations can move forward only when Japanese political leaders have the right recognition of history," a spokesman said.

Ban is to visit Tokyo this week to attend a funeral Tuesday for a former Japanese prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, who died last month.